People of all ages are exposed to a large number of responsibilities and demands in today's busy world, which ultimately leads to stress. Although stress can be positive and motivating, sometimes it exceeds our abilities to adequately cope with it, which can ultimately lead to numerous physical and psychological problems that can be a consequence of continuous stress. To any stressful situation that represents a potential threat to a person's mental and physical balance, a person can react in a way that will protect against the negative effects of stress and increase a person's resistance to stress, but sometimes when a person does not know effective methods of dealing with stress or when stress goes beyond resources available to a person, he can start using coping methods harmful to health, for example, consuming alcohol and other psychoactive substances to cope with stress. Although there are many reasons why people start consuming psychoactive substances, (psychological, sociological and biological) it is assumed that people who consume psychoactive substances are most likely exposed to greater stress or are less resistant to it. It is also believed that they do not use effective coping mechanisms for stress, which makes them susceptible to continue consuming psychoactive substances, which can result in addiction. The aim of this work was to determine whether there is a connection between the use of psychoactive substances and mechanisms of coping with stress, and how prevalent certain mechanisms of coping with stress and the consumption of psychoactive substances are in the general population. The results show that most of the respondents consume alcohol moderately, more than half of the respondents do not consume alcohol and cigarettes, and the most frequently used illegal psychoactive substance was cannabis. It was also shown that respondents who consume cannabinoids and alcohol most often use a problem-focused coping strategy. An educated nurse who is familiar with the problem of stress and the abuse of psychoactive substances is the one who can first recognize the patient's stressors, as well as all the people who surround them, and thus contribute to timely education and prevention of the start of taking psychoactive substances and the emergence of addiction as a consequence of the problems with which individuals do not know how to carry. For this reason, this kind of literature and research is very useful.